Ottawa Senators

Ottawa Senators, Canadian professional ice hockey team based in Ottawa that plays in the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Senators have won one Eastern Conference championship (2007).

The Senators made their debut as an expansion team in 1992, taking their nickname from Ottawa’s status as the seat of the Canadian national government and from an earlier hockey team based in the city that won the Stanley Cup 11 times between 1903 and 1927. The newest iteration of the Senators began with four straight last-place divisional finishes. In the 1996–97 season, behind the play of right winger Daniel Alfredsson and centre Alexi Yashin, Ottawa made its first trip to the play-offs, where it lost in the opening round to the Buffalo Sabres. The following season the Senators earned the lowest seed in the Eastern Conference play-offs, in which they upset the top-seeded New Jersey Devils in six games to garner the first postseason series win in franchise history. In 1998–99 Ottawa won its first division title, but the Sabres eliminated the team in the opening round of the play-offs. The 1998–99 season was the beginning of a seven-year span in which the Senators captured four division titles only to then lose to a lower-seeded team in the play-offs.

Led by the dominant line of Alfredsson, left winger Dany Heatley, and centre Jason Spezza, the Senators notched their 10th consecutive play-off berth after the 2006–07 season. In that postseason Ottawa soundly defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins, the New Jersey Devils, and the Buffalo Sabres en route to the team’s first appearance in the Stanley Cup finals, where the Senators lost to the Anaheim Ducks in five games. Ottawa’s postseason streak ended in 2008–09, but the Senators returned to the play-offs the following year. During the first half of the 2010s, the team posted a string of fair-to-middling records with occasional play-off qualifications, never advancing past the second round of the postseason. Ottawa broke out in 2016–17 when the team, led by star defenseman Erik Karlsson, advanced to the Eastern Conference finals, where the Senators lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins in double overtime of game seven.